Citizens Against Government Waste Pans House Hearing on a Government Takeover of the Internet

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) President Tom Schatz
released the following statement following the House Energy and Commerce
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing
entitled, “Preserving an Open Internet for Consumers, Small Businesses,
and Free Speech.”

CAGW President Tom Schatz said in a statement:

“Today’s hearing was in desperate need of a fact check. In 2015 under
former Chairman Tom Wheeler, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
approved the Open Internet Order (OIO), which imposed Title II of the
Communications Act of 1934 on the internet. These Depression-era
regulations were originally intended for rotary-dialed telephones and
significantly hampered
broadband investment.

“In 2017, Chairman Ajit Pai’s FCC passed the Restoring Internet Freedom
Order (RIFO), overturning the OIO. After the RIFO was adopted, internet
speeds in the nation increased by nearly 40
percent, and the U.S. rose
from twelfth to sixth worldwide in broadband internet speed from 2017 to
2018.

“Proponents on the subcommittee of re-imposing these destructive
regulations, along with the majority of their hand-picked witnesses,
painted a distorted and largely inaccurate picture of the internet
ecosystem and why it has thrived. The internet has grown into a
communications juggernaut precisely because of the bipartisan,
light-touch framework that was instituted in the Telecommunications Act
of 1996. President Bill Clinton was correct at the time when he said
that the internet should be ‘unfettered by federal or state regulation.’

“The Energy and Commerce Committee should stop wasting time on dishonest
hearings that pander to advocates of a government takeover of the
internet and instead focus on crafting telecommunications legislation
that ends the regulatory ping-pong match between administrations and
provides certainty to consumers and providers.”

Citizens
Against Government Waste is the nation’s largest nonpartisan,
nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and
mismanagement in government.